Filed under: UFCJim Miller withstood some powerful striking from Melvin Guillard in the first couple minutes of their main event fight at Friday night’s UFC on FX 1 card and then made Guillard pay, submitting him with a rear-naked choke in the first ro…
Jim Miller withstood some powerful striking from Melvin Guillard in the first couple minutes of their main event fight at Friday night’s UFC on FX 1 card and then made Guillard pay, submitting him with a rear-naked choke in the first round.
It was a great showing on the ground for Miller, and a demonstration once again that while Guillard is a quick and powerful striker, he simply doesn’t have a good enough ground game to compete at a high level.
“I don’t get knocked down often, and he knocked me down. So he hits hard,” Miller said of Guillard after the fight,. “I just found a way to the back. That’s something I’ve always been able to do and from there it was just securing a position. I’m pretty confident that I’m the most dangerous lightweight in the world and I’m willing to make you guys believe that in here.”
Guillard battered Miller with punches and knees in the first minute of the first round and looked like he might have been close to finishing the fight early. Midway through the round Guillard landed a flying knee, but Miller took advantage of Guillard being off balance by taking him down and getting on top of him on the ground.
And from there it was just a matter of time: On the ground Miller has a huge advantage over Guillard, and he easily transitioned to Guillard’s back, sunk in a body triangle, and sunk in a rear-naked choke to force Guillard to tap.
The entire fight lasted just three minutes, and for about two and a half of those minutes Guillard was in control on the feet. But as soon as it went to the ground, Miller had it won.
The win improves Miller’s professional MMA record to 21-3. Guillard falls to 29-10-2.
This is the UFC on FX live blog for Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller, the main event of tonight’s fight card from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn.
Guillard (29-9-2) had a five-fight UFC win streak snapped last October against Joe Lauzon at UFC 136. Miller (20-3) had a seven-fight UFC win streak end when he lost to Ben Henderson last August at UFC on Versus.
UFC president Dana White joins announcer Jon Anik to promote the upcoming Nick Diaz vs. Carlos Condit pay-per-view. Without Baba O’Riley blasting in the background, White and Anik manage to speak without yelling.
Miller enters first to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising. Guillard follows with sunglasses walking out to dance music, a sharp departure from his past choices of hip hop songs.
Herb Dean will referee this lightweight main event.
Round 1: Miller presses the action. Miller lands a left hook, but it doesn’t seem to bother Guillard. Guillard jumps with a knee that misses. Guilard throws another flying knee. He must be looking to catch Miller shooting. Guillard follows the knee with a left hook that floors Miller. Miller attempts to clinch as he tries to regain his compulsure. Miller has a bloodied nose and we’re only a minute in. Guillard throws a high kick that’s blocked. Another high kick is blocked by MIller’s left arm. Miller closes the distance and presses Guillard against the cage. Guillard throws an upward knee and MIller backs off. Guillard throws a straight right and MIller answers with a right hand of his own. Guillard tries to time another jumping knee but Miller avoids it and scores the takedown. MIller scrambles and jumps on a Guillard standing to take his back. Miller brings Guillard to the ground and tightens Guillard’s body with a triangle. Miller forces Guillard to tap to a rear-naked choke, completing an impressive comeback victory.
This is the UFC on FX live blog for Melvin Guillard vs. Jim Miller, the main event of tonight’s fight card from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn.
Guillard (29-9-2) had a five-fight UFC win streak snapped last October against Joe Lauzon at UFC 136. Miller (20-3) had a seven-fight UFC win streak end when he lost to Ben Henderson last August at UFC on Versus.
UFC president Dana White joins announcer Jon Anik to promote the upcoming Nick Diaz vs. Carlos Condit pay-per-view. Without Baba O’Riley blasting in the background, White and Anik manage to speak without yelling.
Miller enters first to the tune of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising. Guillard follows with sunglasses walking out to dance music, a sharp departure from his past choices of hip hop songs.
Herb Dean will referee this lightweight main event.
Round 1: Miller presses the action. Miller lands a left hook, but it doesn’t seem to bother Guillard. Guillard jumps with a knee that misses. Guilard throws another flying knee. He must be looking to catch Miller shooting. Guillard follows the knee with a left hook that floors Miller. Miller attempts to clinch as he tries to regain his compulsure. Miller has a bloodied nose and we’re only a minute in. Guillard throws a high kick that’s blocked. Another high kick is blocked by MIller’s left arm. Miller closes the distance and presses Guillard against the cage. Guillard throws an upward knee and MIller backs off. Guillard throws a straight right and MIller answers with a right hand of his own. Guillard tries to time another jumping knee but Miller avoids it and scores the takedown. MIller scrambles and jumps on a Guillard standing to take his back. Miller brings Guillard to the ground and tightens Guillard’s body with a triangle. Miller forces Guillard to tap to a rear-naked choke, completing an impressive comeback victory.
The main event of UFC on FX will feature two fighters looking for redemption, as Melvin Guillard will be looking to bounce back from a loss to Joe Lauzon and Jim Miller will be looking to bounce back from a surprising loss to Benson Henderson.Of course…
The main event of UFC on FX will feature two fighters looking for redemption, as Melvin Guillard will be looking to bounce back from a loss to Joe Lauzon and Jim Miller will be looking to bounce back from a surprising loss to Benson Henderson.
Of course, the idea for both fighters won’t be so much to win as it will be to not lose. It’s easy enough to fade towards irrelevancy in the lightweight division with one loss. Two in a row is an obstacle neither of these fighters wants to deal with.
Stylistically, the Guillard vs. Miller matchup is your typical clash of opposites. Guillard is your lethal striker in this case, and Miller is your deadly grappler and submission artist.
Concerning matchups like these, I tend to favor strikers. To give a few recent examples, it was easy to pick Alistair Overeem to beat Brock Lesnar, and it was certainly easy to pick Jose Aldo to beat Chad Mendes. Different weight divisions, to be sure, but the idea is the same.
But I’m going against my instincts with this fight. As dangerous as Guillard is, Miller is a tough nut to crack. Guillard is not going to crack him.
Guillard will try his damnedest, though; make no mistake about that. It’s his custom to go for the quick, crushing finish, and it’s something he’s done well in his recent fights. Three of his last four victories have been of the knockout variety. I’m assuming he’d like nothing more than to make it four out of five.
However, you have to think Guillard is going to be a little more cautious against Miller. His last fight ended with him in a rear-naked choke, and Miller could very well put Guillard in one of those if he presents Miller with the opportunity. Guillard will try to hit him where it hurts, but he’s going to have to choose his spots.
It will be up to Miller not to give Guillard any spots at all, and that’s something Miller can most certainly do. He’s good at avoiding strikes, and his next knockout defeat will be his first.
It’s just plain difficult to get any kind of drop on Miller, and he will stand his ground for several rounds if he has to.
The question will be how long Guillard can go before he decides to get aggressive. When (it’s not a matter of if) he does, he’ll be setting himself up to land in Miller’s grasp. A few twists and turns later, Miller will have Guillard in a rather uncomfortable position.
That’s when the tapout will come.
When the deed is done, Guillard will be looking at a long road back to the top.
UFC on FX 1 headliners Melvin Guillard and Jim Miller recently spoke to the media to discuss their fight against one another on Friday night and much more. UFC on FX 1 takes place on Friday night from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The preli…
UFC on FX 1 headliners Melvin Guillard and Jim Miller recently spoke to the media to discuss their fight against one another on Friday night and much more.
UFC on FX 1 takes place on Friday night from the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The prelims begin at 6PM ET/3PT on Fuel TV with the main card starting at 9ET/6PT on FX.
Here are some tidbits from each fighter as we get close to the fight.
Guillard on people saying he overlooked Joe Lauzon at UFC 136: “Everybody has their own opinions. Like I tell everybody and I’ve been stressing this, I don’t overlook anyone. Everybody in this game is tough. That’s why it’s the UFC. That’s why the UFC is as big as it is. They know how to pick talent. I didn’t call out Joe Lauzon because he was an easy fight. I called out Joe Lauzon because I knew he was tough. I really wanted to fight in Houston in front of my family. I didn’t want them to give me that would have been an easy fight, so I asked to fight Joe Lauzon. I respect Joe Lauzon and he’s a very talented fighter.”
On being headliner for this card considering he was coming off a loss: “No, I’m never shocked about stuff like that. Everybody knows when I fight, I come to fight, win or lose I’m coming to fight. I put on a great show for the fans all the time. That’s the way I fight, that’s my style of fighting. I want to make sure the fans enjoy every minute, every moment of me being in the octagon. I wasn’t surprised. Was I surprised it was Jim Miller? Not really. We are two top guys in our division. We are both coming off two tough losses. This fight makes all the sense in the world.”
Miller on what went wrong with Ben Henderson: “I didn’t adapt to the situation. I had an off night. I tried to fight like I don’t normally fight. It didn’t work out to my advantage.”
The UFC’s first live event on FX goes down tonight in Nashville, headlined by a lightweight battle between crowd-pleasing contenders Melvin Guillard and Jim Miller — both of whom are trying to rebound from high-profilelosses. We’ll be liveblogging the main card broadcast beginning at 9 p.m. ET. (FUEL TV will carry the preliminary card fights starting at 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT.) All fighters made weight for the event yesterday, although Fabricio Camoes needed two attempts to make it happen. The full weigh-in results are below.
Main Card (FX, 9 p.m. ET/PT)
Melvin Guillard (156) vs. Jim Miller (155)
Duane Ludwig (170.5) vs. Josh Neer (171)
Mike Easton (135) vs. Jared Papazian (135.5)
Pat Barry (242) vs. Christian Morecraft (256)
The UFC’s first live event on FX goes down tonight in Nashville, headlined by a lightweight battle between crowd-pleasing contenders Melvin Guillard and Jim Miller — both of whom are trying to rebound from high-profilelosses. We’ll be liveblogging the main card broadcast beginning at 9 p.m. ET. (FUEL TV will carry the preliminary card fights starting at 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT.) All fighters made weight for the event yesterday, although Fabricio Camoes needed two attempts to make it happen. The full weigh-in results are below.
Main Card (FX, 9 p.m. ET/PT)
Melvin Guillard (156) vs. Jim Miller (155)
Duane Ludwig (170.5) vs. Josh Neer (171)
Mike Easton (135) vs. Jared Papazian (135.5)
Pat Barry (242) vs. Christian Morecraft (256)
Preliminary Card (FUEL TV, 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT)
Jorge Rivera (185.5) vs. Eric Schafer (185)
Khabib Nurmagomedov (155) vs. Kamal Shalorus (155.5)
Charlie Brenneman (170.5) vs. Daniel Roberts (170.5)
Fabricio Camoes (156*) vs. Tom Hayden (155.5)
Daniel Pineda (145) vs. Pat Schilling (145)
Nick Denis (135.5) vs. Joseph Sandoval (135)
* Camoes originally weighed in at 157.5, but was given an extra hours to cut the remaining weight.
Filed under: UFCIn another situation, Jim Miller and Melvin Guillard could sit down with plenty to talk about. Both UFC lightweights were close to fighting for UFC gold, only to see the possibility slip away when their long win streaks were snapped. In…
In another situation, Jim Miller and Melvin Guillard could sit down with plenty to talk about. Both UFC lightweights were close to fighting for UFC gold, only to see the possibility slip away when their long win streaks were snapped. Instead of commiserating over their lost opportunities, the duo will stand across from each other and try to rebound back into the win column while worsening the other’s pain.
The success of the fighters is based on very differing skill sets. While Guillard favors open space as a way to utilize his quick and powerful strikes, Miller prefers to close distance, fight in tight quarters and drag the fight to the mat where he uses an attacking ground game.
In the past, the latter type of approach has been Guillard’s kryptonite. An immensely gifted fighter, Guillard has struggled with opponents who refuse to be bullied or scared off by his striking firepower. And he’s had nightmares on the ground, with all five of his Octagon losses coming via submission.
That makes Miller (20-3) a logistical problem for him to navigate. In 23 professional fights, Miller has never been knocked out, and even against heavy-handed sluggers like Duane Ludwig and Kamal Shalorus, he hasn’t been knocked down or even rocked.
Because of Miller’s chin as well as his ground prowess (11 of his 20 wins have come via tapout), oddsmakers have made him a comfortable favorite in the bout.
Guillard though, may come with some new tricks up his sleeve. After having worked with the Team Greg Jackson camp in Albuquerque, N.M., for most of his recent fights, he moved his training to Florida to prepare with the fast-growing Blackzilians squad.
There he reportedly worked hard on his ground game with jiu-jitsu coach Sergio “Babu” Gasparelli, a black belt who has tutored middleweight champ Anderson Silva and light-heavyweight contender Rashad Evans, among others.
Whether that will be enough to get past Miller remains to be seen. Guillard, after all, had only about three months since his most recent fight, the loss to Lauzon. That’s not a lot of time to make meaningful adjustments, particularly in an art so nuanced as the submission game.
Miller will no doubt try to test him there. He averages about 3.1 submission tries per 15 minutes, a number that has him just outside the top 10 in UFC history, according to FIghtMetric.
The difficulty for Miller may come in getting the fight to the ground. Historically, he is successful on only 47 percent of his takedown tries, but Miller is such a grinder that he often finds a way to drag his opponent to the mat, and occasionally, knock him down there.
While Miller is best known for his submission game, he has underrated striking. The two hardest-hitters he’s faced so far in his career are arguably Duane “Bang” Ludwig and Kamal Shalorus, and Miller knocked both of them down, directly leading to finishes. With Shalorus, he finished with ground strikes, while he locked in an armbar against Ludwig.
So despite 34 percent striking accuracy, Miller remains a dangerous striker. He also has on his side the built-in advantage of being a southpaw. Guillard has faced a few of them during his UFC run and has had uneven performances, stopping Evan Dunham with strikes while losing to Nate Diaz by submission in a pair of examples.
Guillard (29-9-2, 1 no contest) will likely be slowed down by the possibility of Miller’s shot. Even though he has strong wrestling — he stops 65 percent of takedown tries and often pops up quickly off the ground — he’s faced enough trouble there that he can’t feel too confident when he goes to the ground with a black belt.
Guillard himself connects at only a 40 percent rate, but that figure is a bit misleading, as many of his opponents stand at a distance where it’s nearly impossible to be hit. Miller won’t do that. He manages range well, and likely will try to get inside and limit Guillard’s space. Miller has never shown a fear of engaging a striker, but he goes about it with a plan. Because Guillard is more of an improvisational fighter, this may favor Miller.
Guillard will have his moments in this fight if he can keep Miller on the outside of his strikes. But Miller is a bulldog, and he won’t be denied for long. Either he’s going to get clipped on the way inside, or he’ll find his way to Guillard and turn it into his kind of fight. While Miller looked uncharacteristically outclassed in his last bout, he recently admitted to MMAFighting.com that he was battling a kidney infection and going through a bout of mononucleosis at the time.
Miller has never been rocked in his UFC career, so the odds and evidence suggest that he won’t fall into that kind of trouble against Guillard, either. And what does that leave us? A fight where he’s going to continue coming forward and trying to impose his plan. Over the years, we’ve seen Guillard panic in situations where he’s pressured, and Miller is a high-pressure fighter who hunts openings. He’ll find a way to get the fight to the ground and close it out with a second-round submission.
Jim Miller withstood some powerful striking from Melvin Guillard in the first couple minutes of their main event fight at Friday night’s UFC on FX 1 card and then made Guillard pay, submitting him with a rear-naked choke in the first round.
This is the 
The main event of UFC on FX will feature two fighters looking for redemption, as Melvin Guillard will be looking to bounce back from a loss to Joe Lauzon and Jim Miller will be looking to bounce back from a surprising loss to Benson Henderson.